Baby Wearing

My friend BreAn had this link on her website and I love babywearing stuff! With Raelin I used a sling carrier and she loved it! It was much better on my back than the Baby Bjorn type carrier. But this time around I'm going to try a SPOC. AKA a simple piece of cloth. You use a long strip of cloth to wrap your baby to in a bunch of different positions so you can find something that works for you and your baby. Here's the link to a contest to win several different baby carriers in case you are interested! Good luck!

Win the Essential Babywearing Stash from Along for the Ride (one Beco Butterfly, one Hotsling baby pouch, one BabyHawk Mei Tai, one Zolowear Ring Sling, and one Gypsy Mama Wrap)

And finally, the post we've all been waiting for!

So I'm finally getting around to posting our exciting news that many of you already know, but here's the formal blog announcement: We are going to have a new addition to our family! And no, it's not another dog. We are going to have a baby! The baby is due on January 19th. Raelin hopes it's a girl and Ryker is certain it's a boy (he wants to name it Sebastian). Someone's going to be mighty disappointed! But both kids are really excited (as are Brice and I)! This explains part of my blogging slacker-ness and why I haven't been feeling well and why Raelin has stepped up to be my helper (see previous posts). Our family is very much ready for a new baby and the joy it will bring! We are SO excited!!!!

And as you can see, I'm already showing! What is up with that!? I didn't show until five months with the other kids, but already, at three months, I'm at that awkward "Is she pregnant or just getting fat?" stage. So for any of you that have been wondering that, I'm pregnant (not fat... okay, well maybe a little) and I've actually lost five pounds!

And here are the cute and proud big brother- and big sister-to-be. I'm excited to see how they each interact with a new little baby since they are both old enough to understand what it means to have a new baby and to help take care of it and to understand what "gentle!" means!

And this final picture is just to show off one of our latest projects completed. We were inspired by Kollin's handiwork and the fact that our kids LOVED the sandbox he'd build for his daughter, Kourtney, when we visited last week, so we wanted to build a sandbox of our own. The kids absolutely love it! Brice even put in a water spigot for them so they can build sand castles, but I'm not so sure I like how much mess comes with it. So we'll see if the water spout stays... It's a cool feature, but is it really worth all the sand in the house and wet clothes and extra laundry? I just don't know.

Ryker's Birthday

So I asked Ryker what kind of birthday he wanted (I always make the kids a cake according to a theme that they choose--when they're old enough to choose, that is), and as he was thinking, Raelin, my incredible helper (tongue-in-cheek) said, "Ryker, do you want a kangaroo birthday?" Ryker got really excited and said, "Yeah!!!" "Okay, how in the world do you make a kangaroo cake!?!" I asked myself. Well, after much thinking and deliberation, I came up with this:

First I got on the internet and searched for cartoon pictures of kangaroos but couldn't find any I liked. So I used a photograph and tried my hand at drawing a somewhat cartoon-y kangaroo. Then, when I was satisfied, I put it on a cookie sheet and covered it with wax paper. Then I traced the outline with dark brown frosting and filled it in with lighter brown frosting. Then I put it in the freezer. When the cake was cooled, I piped the background onto the cake and then I took the frozen kangaroo and turned it over onto the cake and CAREFULLY peeled off the wax paper. Then I used chocolate syrup for the eyes, nose and mouth. Ta-da!!! Sometimes I amaze even myself! I thought this would be an impossible cake, but I was actually pretty happy with it. Though I will admit that the wax paper and freezing idea wasn't my own.

Ryker got a car-track rug for his birthday along with lots of other great presents. Mimi was there and so was Grammie and Uncle Jordan, Auntie Angel and Liam. Papa was in Illinois, Uncle William was working, and Granddad was sick--party poopers!

One of Ryker presents bit him! He got a little toy that shoots little helicopter things out of a funnel and mister curious wanted to watch how it worked. Right when the thing was launching, Ryker looked into the funnel and got whacked in the mouth with the flier. In the picture below he's showing me the blood from his lip. Poor birthday boy!

All in all it was a wonderful birthday for Ryker. In the afternoon, some neighbor friends came over to play water balloons (thanks, Mimi, for filling 200 water balloons that were gone in just minutes!) and have cupcakes. The kids had lots of fun and we even got them to play a few water balloon games. For dinner, Ryker had chosen baked potato bar (what 3 year old wants baked potatoes for his birthday dinner!? Okay, well his first choice was cereal, but he had that for breakfast) and it was delicious. Auntie Angel made a watermelon basket and Grammie brought corn on the cob and a BIG bag of M&M's. Then we opened presents and had cake and ice cream. Ryker loved all of it! It was a busy and fun-filled day.

Raelin's Special Day

I haven't been feeling well lately (I'll tell you about that in a minute) and Raelin has been my big helper. Usually if I ask Raelin to do something, she doesn't want to or she complains or I have to coerce her or something, but lately she says "sure!" when I ask her to do something. It's been SO nice! SO I wanted to do something nice for her. I asked her what a fun Mommy/Daughter date would be and she wanted to go on a hike up the canyon (that's my girl!). So we did and we had a lot of fun.

There were lots of cows and the views were awesome! Cows are kind of scary. They are so big and so dumb and I just never know what they are going to do. One charged my car the other day! So they kind of creep me out; though, that doesn't change the fact that one day I will have a milk cow (or two--you guys know how I love milk). We also collected a lot of rocks and brought them home and washed them off. Some of them now grace our walking path out front. We also looked for snakes, but we only found one dead one on the road.

Pretty girls!
(That's Raelin's pink monkey hanging around her neck)

Mowing the lawn--Always an adventure in the Somers family

So our lawn received its first mowing on Saturday. Prior to being able to mow the lawn, though, Brice had to get his brother's lawn mower going. He finally decided it must be too low on gas. He and Ryker went to the car to try to siphon some out of the tank. I had just taken the car to get gas, so it was well topped off. Brice put the hose in and blew a little to try to find the level of the gas. Unfortunately, when he blew into the tank, some gas erupted from the tank and doused Ryker's poor little face! Brice stripped off his drenched shirt and ran him onto the house as he yelled for me. I was in the back yard and called back, "Yeah?" to which Brice just yelled my name again. Then I heard Ryker's blood-curdling scream-cry. I dropped the hoe and ran into the house to find Ryker naked in the sink and Brice holding his head under the faucet. Brice told me that he'd gotten gasoline sprayed in his face, so I grabbed my phone and the phone book and called poison control while Brice continued to drown the poor boy's stinging face and eyes under the faucet. Poison control said swallowing a little gas isn't a big deal (so if you're ever dying of thirst...), but inhaling it can cause really bad pneumonia. So she said to watch for a cough and to flush his eyes for 15 minutes. So that's what we did. The poor kid also had gas drench his shorts which irritated his boy parts (those poor things have been through the ringer the last month or so! First he got them smashed by the toilet seat when he was going pee, then he got a minor chemical irritation/burn when he managed to undo the childproof top to some cleaning solvent and spilled it all over his drawers, and now the gasoline incident! Now don't go calling CPS on us or anything! I promise we take good care of our kids; they're just Somers'. These things happen in this family. You get used to it. Unfortunately.)

So Ryker's eyes (and his boy parts) are just fine now, but in the picture above you can kind of see that they are a little sleepy looking. He felt fine by this time though, and he was out having a grass fight with his sister with all the grass clippings.

Raelin played so hard and so long in the fresh cut grass that her feet and hands were completely green! Since green is her favorite color, it made her day to have green body parts!

Cherry-Picking fun!

The other day we went to our friends' house to pick cherries. They have three huge cherry trees in their side yard and all of them were super encumbered with berries. The birds had started eating them, so Noelle wanted to get some before the birds got them all. The kids had a great time picking and eating all the cherries they could handle. They both climbed up in the trees (true to form, Ryker almost fell) and monkeyed around trying to get the riper cherries at the top. Then they had a cherry fight with the dads while the moms were looking up jam recipes. We made jam and fruit leathers that night and they both turned out GREAT!

Raelin will run through sprinklers anytime she can. She's a fish! We went to a really cool water park in Provo a few weeks ago (can't beat $3/person, and Ryker's free for another year!) and she cried and cried when it was time to go. Proof that she's got some Lawler in her somewhere.

Blogging Catch-Up

Okay, so I got WAY behind on our blog lately. It's been a crazy past few weeks. So to catch you up, here's story #1:

One day, we went for a walk around the neighborhood and Jax suddenly went running around the empty lots at top speed with his head in a utility cover tube thingy. It was so funny looking! He just plowed it around without being able to see where he was going. After he quit plowing it, Brice went and looked in it. He was pretty sure there was a small animal in it that Jax was trying to get. Jax hunts field mice. Sure enough, here's what we found down in the tube:

Next we have some new projects we've completed that are pretty cool. A neighbor down the street put in some sod and he had a palate of sod leftover. Since we are the only ones on our block without grass, he gave it to us! Free sod! Yippee! So we laid that sod and then we really wanted to sod the rest of that patch of yard so that the grasses would be the same and so that we wouldn't be wasting water (that set of sprinklers was watering half grass and half dirt). So we got enough sod to finish that portion of the yard. Here's a picture of the sod from our neighbor; I don't have a picture of the whole patch with sod yet, but it looks awesome and it is so much nicer to sit on and play on than dirt! Keeps the house cleaner too.
Our other project was a dog house. With the heat and the rain, I hated bringing muddy dogs in the house, but felt too bad for them to leave them outside without shelter. So we built a dog house. I did the first half myself and Brice helped with the rest. I think it turned out great and the dogs love it! And it wasn't a moment too soon either. We had a temporary addition to our dog pack. He came creeping up the driveway toward Brice one rainy morning and he was drenched and shivering. So Brice brought him up to our room wrapped in a blanket and said, "I brought you something to play with today." He was so cute and cuddly and pitiful!
Here is the cute little stray puppy. He was such a sweet little thing. He was mellow (neither of our dogs are at all mellow! Well, Jax is mellow sometimes when he's in the house sleeping) and cuddly and Raelin just loved him! We walked around the neighborhood looking for his home, but we didn't find it. We put up signs in all the surrounding neighborhoods, but we didn't get any calls for two weeks.
At the end of two weeks, we decided to find him a permanent home. Three dogs was too much for us and he was too sweet to send to the pound. So we gave him to a neighbor family that had expressed an interest. The day after we gave him to them, the owners finally called! Unfortunately, the neighbor family's encounter with the owner kind of confirmed our suspicions that the puppy had been mistreated (he piddled a lot). When the owner went to the neighbors' house to get him, the man called the puppy and the puppy cowered and didn't want to go to him. Poor puppy. We wish we would have taken the signs down as soon as we gave him to the other family. But, what can you do? Just look at that cute little face! How can you not just love him to pieces!?So, the real excitement of late was the fair. The kids went to the fair last year and they loved it and talked about it for a LONG time afterwards. So this year, we really wanted to make a big deal of it for them. We went one evening and the first ride they went on was a roller coaster for kids. In line, Raelin was skeptical and Ryker was excited. Raelin was kinda scared and worried, but Ryker couldn't wait to go! We put them on the ride and went and stood where we could see them. As soon as they came around the first bend, their roles completely changed! Raelin was smiling from ear to ear and waving her hands and Ryker had gritted teeth and big, huge eyes and a terrified look on his face. Oh, it was priceless! I was sad it was too dark for pictures. Every time the kids passed us, Raelin would wave and Ryker was too scared to hear us screaming his name. Finally, about the fourth time around he saw us and finally smiled. When they got off the ride, we asked Ryker what he thought and he said, "Ga-REAT!"
The next morning we went to our friends' house for breakfast and walked a half a block to main street for the parade. The kids loved it! The kids got lots of candy and got to see horses and tractors and all kinds of cool stuff.
The picture above is Ryker running back from the middle of the road with the candy he scored.
We're tight with Ronald McDonald, so he came and said hi to us. He's a funny guy. After the parade, we went back to our friend's house and had a BBQ and a water balloon fight. The kids ran through the sprinklers and had a great time!

Then we went home and took naps for a little while before going back to the fair for dinner with Granddad and some more fun rides. The kids and Brice went on the ferris wheel and they LOVED it!

This is what you get at the end of a day like this one, but their day wasn't over yet! We went up to some friends' house in Alpine because I had to interview an adolescent for my class (this was Saturday night and the paper was due Monday! I was pushing my luck!). While I did the interview, the Rossi's let the kids swim in their pool. They had a great time and we were there swimming and talking (and eating their delicious homemade applesauce) until 10:00 at night! Oh, what a busy day!

(How does she sleep like that!?! We try to lean her against the door all the time, but she always flops back over like this)

Now, backtracking a bit, here are pictures of my cute and funny boys. Random and storyless, but I love Ryker's face and I thought some of you California folks would like to see Brice's long hair. It's longer now and, much to Brice's brother William's chagrin, there seem to be no plans in sight for a haircut!

Backtracking still more, we went up to William and Angel's new house in Deweyville (AKA middle-of-nowhere; most of the people in the bordering town have never heard of it). They have a great new house and we went for a fun and beautiful little hike. We found this pond and the river and a dead river rat. Gross. Don't worry--I didn't take its picture.

One, two, three, WEEEEEE!!!!

Okay, the end! I'll try to keep up better for you in the future, but I do have an excuse. Several, actually, but I'll get to those in another post when I have pictures to go with them. One of them was just that finals were killer! And like I said, I procrastinated my final paper to the literal last minute. I was ten minutes late to class but I finished it! I actually wrote the whole 10 page paper in the morning on the day it was due.